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AI in education: How UBC’s Faculty of Education is navigating opportunity and risk on shifting ground

By Johanna Mills

Young person holding a smartphone displaying an AI assistant interface, with a smartwatch visible on their wrist.

June 12, 2026

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping classrooms, driving new conversations about policy, pedagogy and its role in education. At UBC’s Faculty of Education, researchers, educators, practitioners and students are working together to examine the implications of this transformation for learning, equity and the future of the teaching profession — and to equip everyone involved with the foundation they need to approach these technologies wisely and effectively.

This work takes on new urgency in a shifting national landscape. Canada’s emerging national AI strategy aims to expand AI literacy, create pathways for young Canadians into AI-related work and ensure the technology develops in ways that reflect Canadian values. The Faculty’s efforts, already well underway, are closely aligned with that vision.

For Dean Jan Hare, this moment requires deliberate, purpose-driven leadership. “As one of Canada’s leading institutions for education research, teaching and community engagement, we have a responsibility to determine how these technologies are used in education and define the values that guide them,” says Dean Hare. “That means rethinking digital literacies, preparing teacher candidates for AI-integrated classrooms and advancing research rooted in ethics and equity.”

“We have a responsibility to determine how these technologies are used in education and define the values that guide them.”
– Dean Jan Hare

The Faculty’s new 2026-2031 strategic plan, Transforming Learning for a Shared Future, affirms a clear commitment to forward-thinking, ethical AI use, digital and algorithmic literacy, and research that keeps the wellbeing of educators, learners and communities at the centre. It calls on all of us to ask not only how AI works, but when it should be used, by whom and on what terms. Across teacher education, graduate study and professional learning, this commitment is already taking shape.

Building Critical AI Literacy for the Classroom

In partnership with the Vancouver School Board, the Faculty’s Teacher Education Office offers a Digital Pedagogies and AI option within the Bachelor of Education Secondary program. Teacher candidates are learning to integrate generative AI, learning analytics and assistive technologies into their teaching, with digital citizenship, critical thinking and ethical decision-making woven throughout.

Faculty members are collaboratively developing a new UBC-wide undergraduate course to help students build digital competencies and agency. Tentatively titled Critical Digital Literacies: AI, Algorithms, and Agency, the course will examine AI through interdisciplinary lenses, connecting pedagogical and societal perspectives. Rather than treating AI only as a technological breakthrough, the course will explore how AI both shapes and is shaped by labour, environmental concerns, equity, justice and culture.

At the graduate level, the Master of Educational Technology (MET) program prepares students to examine AI through dedicated courses and as a lens across the entire curriculum. “Through the MET program, I’ve learned to look beyond the allure of what AI can do and focus on what we should build and why,” says Sooyoung Yang, a student and graduate research assistant. “It’s provided a critical lens to balance technological affordances with ethical and pedagogical standards, teaching me to lead with educational intention and let principles shape the technology, not the other way around.”

“Lead with educational intention and let principles shape the technology, not the other way around.”
– Sooyoung Yang, MET student

For practicing educators and administrators, the Faculty’s Office of Professional Learning offers a series of professional development opportunities, including a micro-credential in Critical AI in the Classroom and courses exploring how these technologies are entering K-12 contexts.

Taken together, these initiatives reflect the Faculty’s view that AI readiness isn’t a destination. As these technologies keep evolving, so too must the capacity to engage with them critically. Preparing educators and learners to question, guide and define AI’s role in educational practice is ongoing work.

The Real Question: Who Does AI Actually Serve?

Alongside this teaching and professional learning work, Faculty researchers are asking deeper questions about power, agency, equity and accountability in AI-mediated education. Their work examines not only what these technologies can do, but how—and whether—they should be used, who benefits, who is excluded and under what conditions.

“It is important to ask: whose perspectives are being amplified and whose are being left out?”
– Dr. Ron Darvin

Dr. Rachel Horst is researching how HelpMe, a chatbot developed by Dr. Ramon Lawrence and his team from the UBC Okanagan Faculty of Science, can foster deeper AI literacy and student engagement in smaller graduate courses, with a focus on transparent, reflective engagement. “Students are already using AI tools, often in ways that are invisible to instructors,” she says. “What interests me about HelpMe is that it offers a shared, course-contained and transparent space for navigating AI-mediated learning together, while cultivating disciplinary practices for working with AI in learning and meaning-making. One early finding is that simply making the tool available isn’t enough; we also need to model practices and encourage critical engagement with AI-generated outputs—capacities students can carry with them as they engage with other commercial AI platforms.”

Dr. Leah Macfadyen sees AI literacy as far more than a checklist of technical skills. Her research in higher education focuses on how graduate and professional learners develop the critical judgment, ethical awareness and evaluative capacities needed to work effectively with AI in research and practice. Through the creation of a cross-disciplinary graduate course, she is investigating how these capacities can be cultivated throughout the full research lifecycle, supporting the thoughtful, responsible and discipline-specific use of AI-enabled tools and methods. “By mapping these complex learning processes, I hope to assess the pedagogical effectiveness of the instructional interventions I’m developing and use what I learn to keep refining how we support deep, critical engagement with AI,” she says.

Dr. Peter Arthur’s work also centres on learner agency, examining how students can become more confident, strategic and self-directed. His research explores how these qualities shape the ways students understand, accept and use generative AI. Early findings suggest that effective AI use depends not only on access to the technology, but also on students’ confidence, motivation, support from others and ability to manage their own learning. These insights can help instructors better guide students as they learn to work with AI tools.

Dr. Jillianne Code, Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Learner Agency, focuses on developing practical strategies so that technology supports, rather than limits, human potential. Central to this is Postdigital Learner Agency, a framework that helps people navigate, question and take control of the digital tools that shape their lives. Drawing on real-world interactions with AI-driven learning platforms, her research yields policy recommendations and digital literacy tools to keep people, rather than algorithms, in charge of their own futures.

Dr. Ron Darvin challenges the assumption that AI is neutral. “The devices and the generative AI platforms we use shape the information we get and how it’s presented to us,” he says. “The way these platforms are designed—including the data and languages they are trained on and the algorithms they use—shapes our interactions with AI in ways that are not always equal. When AI tools produce answers that sound trustworthy, but don’t clearly show where the information comes from, it is important to ask: whose perspectives are being amplified and whose are being left out?” These impacts fall unevenly on students already facing barriers related to language, identity and socioeconomic context, with significant implications for curriculum, pedagogy and policy.

Governance and accountability are equally central. Dr. Jen Jenson, Director of the MET program, is leading a study examining how Canadian universities are establishing guidelines for AI use and how educators, students and administrators are navigating these tools in practice. “We have this unregulated space. I know you cannot hold back the tide, but ethical and responsible use of these tools is what we must focus on,” she says. Dr. Jenson’s work highlights a defining tension: in the absence of external regulation, the choices institutions and individuals make about AI carry even greater weight.

“We have this unregulated space. I know you cannot hold back the tide, but ethical and responsible use of these tools is what we must focus on.”
– Dr. Jen Jenson

Learning from the Front Lines

As AI becomes increasingly present in teaching, assessment and professional practice, the Faculty is taking a deliberately grounded approach: listening first, learning alongside educators and creating spaces to explore practical, values-driven and equity-focused questions. This work is deeply rooted in ongoing dialogue with the communities it serves.

This spring, the Faculty initiated an AI listening tour of the more than 60 school districts across British Columbia to better understand how educators are encountering these tools in their daily work. The response surpassed expectations and has sparked discussion about future initiatives, including in-service professional learning offerings around AI and assessment for BC teachers.

MET’s upcoming second annual summer institute on the Ethical, Critical, and Professional use of Generative AI in Teaching and Learning brings together students, educators and alumni to examine its applications, challenges and broader socio-political implications.

The Teacher Education Office’s AI Practitioner-in-Residence program similarly brings experienced educators into direct conversation with instructors, coursework and policy. This year’s resident, Parth Sarin, a researcher at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, brought added depth to conversations about AI’s implications for classroom equity, academic integrity and the future of teaching.

The Faculty’s Learning Design and Digital Innovation team supports instructors and staff through ongoing workshops, podcast episodes and professional development sessions. They evaluate the growing number of AI tools for their pedagogical value and risks, with attention to privacy, academic integrity, accessibility and meaningful purpose.

An interdisciplinary AI Working Group provides a forum for faculty and staff to meet regularly to test ideas, share practices and explore AI across teaching, learning, research, administration and creative work. Members experiment directly with these tools while asking probing questions about ethics, boundaries and purpose-building, gaining experiential knowledge about where AI opens doors and where it does not.

The Faculty’s work — in classrooms, research spaces and school districts across BC — reflects a broader national momentum. As Canada moves to expand AI literacy and ensure the technology serves all Canadians, UBC’s Faculty of Education offers a model for what values-driven, equity-centred AI engagement can look like in practice, grounded in relationality with and among learners.

AI brings something genuinely new to education: tools that move faster than policy, operate at unprecedented scale and carry implications that are still unfolding. At UBC’s Faculty of Education, the goal is not simply to keep pace but to ensure that these technologies serve teaching, learning, knowledge-building and the public good.

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Interested in learning more about AI in education at UBC’s Faculty of Education?

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Contact

Johanna Mills
Faculty of Education, Office of the Dean
johanna.mills@ubc.ca

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